MIcrosoft has announced that it will be replacing the free version of its popular Office Suite that comes on most computers today with an advertising supported version. A cache of ads will be stored on the computer along with the new version of Microsoft Office Suite.

Whenever the computer logs on to the internet the cache of ads will be refreshed.

Leave it to Microsoft to find a way to serve up ads to us when we are not even on the internet.....

However, a free alternative is available here:

http://www.openoffice.org/

It is free to download and to use.

It provides lots of options not available with the Microsoft version.

It has no ads.... Yeah!!!!

Also, IBM has just announced their intent to join the OpenOffice community and will ad their own free programs for word processing,spreadsheets and presentations, the I.B.M. Lotus Symphony. The programs will be available as free downloads from the I.B.M. Web site.

The Symphony software will be another free alternative to Microsoft’s mainstay Office programs — Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

I.B.M. is also joining forces with Google, which offers the open-source desktop productivity programs as part of its Google Pack of software which is available here:

http://walkaboutangel.googlepages.com/googlestuff

Read the press release here:

http://www.openoffice.org/press/ibm_press_release.html

and another article here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/18/technology/18blue.html?ex=1347854400&en=ddba9adf7692a296&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Open source software is a great resource for all of us and lots of it, like Mozilla Firefox works better than the programs they were designed to replace. I know I use open source software and I love it.....

Angel